


hushed and white with snow

by shannedo



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Afterlife, Gen, Happy Ending, Kings in the North, Kings of Winter, Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 19:00:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19091146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shannedo/pseuds/shannedo
Summary: After many summers and winters, the Queen in the North passes on peacefully in her bed.When she wakes, she is greeted by the faces of her past.





	hushed and white with snow

The great hall was bright.

The large arches on the walls let in a soft glow, and the fresh rushes on the floor whispered under the sweep of her gown. It had been winter the last time she’d been here. Not as harsh a winter as the first of her life – and none had been since – but as chilled and harsh as any Northern winter was. Now though, the sunlight of her childhood danced on the flagstones and the scent of fresh awakenings laced the air.

The hall was empty save for a familiar long table set on the dais. The table she had taken meals at with her mother, father, sister and brothers. The same table she had fed her own children at and then her grandchildren. She had never once grown tired of the way their shrieks and laughter bounced off the rafters, the sound reminding her of Robb’s booming laugh and the way Bran and Rickon would hoot and holler. In those days, she’d repressed her own giggles with a ladylike hand to her mouth but not since. There had been many days in her life where peals of laughter were far and few between so she had promised herself long ago that when they did come, she would not hold them back.

As she drew closer to the dais, she was pulled out of the trance of the glowing hall and the ease with which she moved when she realised the table was crowded with figures. Men, she had no doubt, from the way their voices were low and gruff, and they were shrouded in furs as unkempt as their thick beards. They spoke among themselves, split off into no fewer than ten conversations, some of them quiet as though conspiring, some of them bursting with laughter. She realised she did not know these men, although they all seemed vaguely familiar. Gaunt faces, grey eyes, hair as dark as the wings of a raven. All except for one man whose curls shone like the embers of a dying flame.  Kissed by fire.

“What are you doing here?”

The voices crowding the table died down, as one by one, heads of black and grey and brown turned to look. In her early days upon the throne, she had not been a stranger to the way men would grow silent when she announced herself in a room. Some had never gotten used to the idea of the rule of a queen. Some had just liked to look at her in a way that never failed to make her Lord husband grind his teeth. But the looks bestowed upon her by the men at the high table felt different. Reverent, almost.

It was the redhead who finally spoke, his chair scraping backwards on the stone floor as he stood. “Waiting for you,” was his answer. His gruff accented voice swept through Sansa like a winter wind. Her lips parted in shock.

This was not the brother of her memories.

Robb stood a head taller than she remembered, every bit the man she never knew. His face was as gaunt and severe as their father’s. His blue eyes were no longer joyous pools but the cool shock of the Shivering Sea.

This was not the boy Sansa had half heartedly rolled her eyes at as he chased Arya round the training yard. This was someone different. A leader, a husband, a king. The Young Wolf.

The icy set of Robb’s features softened as he came round the long table and stepped off the dais. He was smiling by the time he reached her and she all but flung herself into his arms. “Robb,” she murmured into his Tully red locks. 

She felt him smile against her neck. “It’s good to see you, Sansa.” He stepped back, considering the graceful grey waves of her hair and the lines of her face. “Earned from smiles, I hope,” he said as he traced a line by the corner of her mouth with his thumb.

Sansa brought up her weathered hand to cover his one, young and supple. “A few frowns, but many smiles.”

Ice blue eyes glimmered. “Good.”

She frowned as she examined her brother’s smooth face. Skin pale and peachy and supple as the day he was born, even if his face had grown stern. She didn’t even know the day that he died. How old had he been? “You should’ve had the chance to earn your lines,” her voice was more watery than she expected it to be.

Robb’s smile turned mournful. “Some things are not meant to be, sister.”

She pressed a gentle kiss to his palm then held onto his fingers.  Perhaps not , she thought,  but that never stopped the dreams of what could have been . She had named her eldest son Eddard but he had looked like Robb, broad shouldered and copper haired. He could have been Robb’s boy, had Robb lived long enough to father one on his lady wife. “What is this place?” She asked, looking to the Great Hall that was so familiar but yet so different.

“The Hall of Kings.”

Jon Snow was smiling at her from over Robb’s shoulder. Unable to prevent the joyful noise from falling from her lips, she gestured to him to come closer and pulled him into their embrace, one arm around each of her elder brothers. Jon’s hair had held much of its inky shade in his later years, his skin weathered. 

It had been years, so many years since they had seen each other. But sometimes there had still been dreams which she had awoken from and knew, sure as she knew the sun would rise, that he was well and happy. His eyes were happier, less somber, than the day he had stabbed the Dragon Queen, even if they had taken on a watery shade of grey.

“The Hall of Kings... we’ll have to see about getting that name changed,” a mirth that she recognised well glimmered in Robb’s eyes.

“Ever the revolutionary, eh, Stark?” Jon laughed, clapping Robb on the shoulder in an eerie mirror of a time long gone.

Robb scoffed. “Says the King who bent the knee to the first queen who opened her legs, Snow.” She expected Jon to glower, but judging by the way he just rolled his eyes, she guessed it was an old dig from Robb. “Or whatever your last name is these days.”

Jon snorted at that and Sansa herself had to giggle. They were both drowned out by their elder brother’s booming laugh however and it all felt so familiar, she thought her heart might burst. Quickly, though, Robb remembered himself and pressed his lips into a more solemn smile.

“Joking aside, I’ve got to thank you both,” he said, his arm still around Sansa and other hand clapped firmly on Jon’s shoulder. “Thank you for holding our kingdom, our home. And thank you for always fighting for our family.” He looked sad. “Even on the darkest days.”

There had been no darker days than when Ilyn Payne took their father’s head. No darker days than when Winterfell was burned and who she thought to be Bran and Rickon with it. No darker days than when her mother’s throat was cut to the bone and her body dumped in the river. When Robb and Grey Wind were made a mockery of, stitched together into a grotesque wolf king. She wondered if her brother knew what they did to his body. She didn’t know if she wanted to ask.

“It was never a question of whether we would,” Jon said, his eyes lost in his own darkness. “Just how we would.”

Sansa looked properly upon the men at the table now. Some looked grimmer than others. She wondered which were the vicious Kings of Winter who battered the North until it fell to Stark rule. She looked for faces to fit all the kings of her memory. Brandon the Builder, Brandon the Breaker, the Laughing Wolf, Snowbeard, Ice Eyes. Her eyes settled on a man whose fashions spoke of a time not so long gone and who regarded the three siblings with something in his eyes she might have called righteousness. This must be Torrhen, she told herself,  the King Who Knelt.

“Mother and father and Rickon must be here too, right?” she asked Robb as she started to identify the missing faces.

“Aye,” Robb said, “we were tasked with the vigil to wait for you, but you will see them soon.”

“They’re excited to see you,” Jon said. Then smiled. “And your mother wishes to hear of her grandchildren.”

Sansa scoffed at that. “And great grandchildren, as well.”

Robb was beaming with pride. “You will meet Uncle Benjen again too. And Jory. Grandmother and grandfather, Uncle Brandon and Aunt Lyanna. I figured you with your mind might wish to meet Cregan, the Old Man too.”

The excitement of all these long gone faces and the ones she never got to meet was dizzying to Sansa, who could do little else but grin. “Oh, and....” Jon added, looking past Sansa towards the great oak doors of the hall. “Well, you’d be as well just to turn around and see.”

The scratch of claws and an excited yip was all the prompting Sansa needed to spin around and shriek with excitement. She barely made it a step before Lady was throwing herself into her mistress’ arms with reckless abandon.

“My mother was supposed to be watching her,” Jon mumbled gruffly.

“You set a wolf to mind a wolf, what else did you expect?” Robb was laughing.

Sansa could do little but giggle as the little pup licked her face mercilessly.

“Welcome home, Sansa,” said Robb.

Jon smiled. “The Queen in the North.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you guys enjoyed this - I don’t really know what it is, I just got an idea and started writing! Let me know what you think. I will always have a soft spot for House Stark :)
> 
> I purposely kept the identity of Sansa’s husband and baby daddy vague so it may be whoever your heart desires!
> 
> I’m on tumblr! @astolove


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